[gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[maxim wexler]

Hello everbody,

Maxtor suggests I do a low-level format of my flaky
Diamond 16 drive using their Powermax tool.
Unfortunately it doesn't give you the option of
sparing one partition or the other -- it does the
whole thing.

I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first half
of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there a
way to do a low-level format of part of a drive while
leaving the rest intact?

-mw


		
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[Alexander Skwar]

maxim wexler schrieb:

> I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first half
> of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there a
> way to do a low-level format of part of a drive while
> leaving the rest intact?

Uhm, I'd make a backup of the data and let that tool
whatever it wants to do.

Alexander Skwar
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[krzaq]

On 10/18/05, maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello everbody,
>
> Maxtor suggests I do a low-level format of my flaky
> Diamond 16 drive using their Powermax tool.
> Unfortunately it doesn't give you the option of
> sparing one partition or the other -- it does the
> whole thing.
>
> I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first half
> of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there a
> way to do a low-level format of part of a drive while
> leaving the rest intact?
If you have the drive partitioned you can

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdaX

Where hdaX is the partition to zero out. This should
be equivalent to a low level format.

PS:
Have you tried running badblocks on it?

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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[maxim wexler]

--- krzaq <krzakers@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/18/05, maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Hello everbody,
> >
> > Maxtor suggests I do a low-level format of my
> flaky
> > Diamond 16 drive using their Powermax tool.
> > Unfortunately it doesn't give you the option of
> > sparing one partition or the other -- it does the
> > whole thing.
> >
> > I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first
> half
> > of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there
> a
> > way to do a low-level format of part of a drive
> while
> > leaving the rest intact?
> If you have the drive partitioned you can
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdaX
> 
> Where hdaX is the partition to zero out. This should
> be equivalent to a low level format.

Done, but problem remains: the start of the drive
seems un-writable for some reason. It won't even let
me install Win98!, get

run-time error R6003 integer divide by 0sk
setup found errors on your hard disk

I told the tech at Maxtor that it could boot linux
from another drive and *couldn't* boot MS products at
all.

He says, if the drive has errors then nothing will
work. Entire drive must be zeroed.

Would a true test involve zeroing the whole thing? I
don't see why if the file systems were always intact
even when XP-pro was installed(though not booting) on
the first half of this 120G HDrive.

I wonder if there isn't a tiny part of the drive that
comes before the first partition, like those first few
grooves on a vinyl record ;-)

> 
> PS:
> Have you tried running badblocks on it?

none found
> 
> --
> Regards
> Karol Krzak
> 
> -- 
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 



	
		
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[Scott Tiret]

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On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 09:28 -0700, maxim wexler wrote:
> 
> I wonder if there isn't a tiny part of the drive that
> comes before the first partition, like those first few
> grooves on a vinyl record ;-)

There is.  You can reset it by using fdisk /mbr (from the Microsoft
Windows boot disk).  Or you can try using cfdisk as described below.

man cfdisk

DOS 6.x WARNING
       The DOS 6.x FORMAT command looks for some information in the
first sector of the data area of the partition, and treats this
information as more reliable than the information in the partition
table.  DOS FORMAT expects DOS FDISK to clear the first 512 bytes of the
data area of a partition whenever a size change occurs.  DOS FORMAT will
look at this extra information even if the /U flag is given -- we
consider this a bug in DOS FORMAT and DOS FDISK.

       The bottom line is that if you use cfdisk or fdisk to change the
size of a DOS partition table entry, then you must also use dd to zero
the first 512 bytes of that  par-tition  before  using  DOS  FORMAT to
format the partition.  For example, if you were using cfdisk to make a
DOS partition table entry for /dev/hda1, then (after exiting fdisk or
cfdisk and rebooting Linux so that the partition table information is
valid) you would use the command "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512
count=1" to zero the first 512 bytes of the partition. Note:

       BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL if you use the dd command, since a small
typo can make all of the data on your disk useless.

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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[maxim wexler]

--- Scott Tiret <stiret@oneredshoe.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 09:28 -0700, maxim wexler
> wrote:
> > 
> > I wonder if there isn't a tiny part of the drive
> that
> > comes before the first partition, like those first
> few
> > grooves on a vinyl record ;-)
> 
> There is.  You can reset it by using fdisk /mbr
> (from the Microsoft

doesn't work

> Windows boot disk).  Or you can try using cfdisk as
> described below.
> 



		
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[Douglas James Dunn]

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um a low level format is always the entire drive.  It basically returns
the drive to factory default.  AKA all 0's.  A high level format would
be what your talking about which would be the same as reformatting a
partition. as fdisk would do.

On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 08:42 -0700, maxim wexler wrote:
> Hello everbody,
> 
> Maxtor suggests I do a low-level format of my flaky
> Diamond 16 drive using their Powermax tool.
> Unfortunately it doesn't give you the option of
> sparing one partition or the other -- it does the
> whole thing.
> 
> I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first half
> of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there a
> way to do a low-level format of part of a drive while
> leaving the rest intact?
> 
> -mw
> 
> 
> 		
> __________________________________ 
> Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! 
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[maxim wexler]

--- Douglas James Dunn <douglas.dj.dunn@gmail.com>
wrote:

> um a low level format is always the entire drive. 
> It basically returns
> the drive to factory default.  AKA all 0's.  A high
> level format would
> be what your talking about which would be the same
> as reformatting a
> partition. as fdisk would do.

done that. Disk boots linux which is halfway along
120G drive(hdb) provided /boot resides on another,
master drive(hda).

_Nothing_ can be booted from the start of the drive.
And nothing dos or windows can be installed on it at
all.

LBA is set to auto in BIOS, but POST console says it's
off.

I used fdisk and mkdosfs to format the first half
fat32 but it makes no difference. 

-mw




		
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[Glenn Enright]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:40, maxim wexler wrote:
>
> I used fdisk and mkdosfs to format the first half
> fat32 but it makes no difference.
>

Did your problems start when you tried to remove windows? Or was the disk just 
plain flakey to begin with?
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[maxim wexler]

--- Glenn Enright <elinar@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:40, maxim wexler wrote:
> >
> > I used fdisk and mkdosfs to format the first half
> > fat32 but it makes no difference.
> >
> 
> Did your problems start when you tried to remove
> windows? Or was the disk just 
> plain flakey to begin with?

it started a little flakey but soon progressed to all
out dandruff!

> -- 
> 
> /* The HME is the biggest piece of shit I have ever
> seen. */
>         linux-2.6.6/drivers/scsi/esp.h
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> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 



		
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Re: [gentoo-user] low-level formatting a harddrive

[Matthias Bethke]

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Hi maxim,
on Wednesday, 2005-10-19 at 09:44:58, you wrote:
> it started a little flakey but soon progressed to all
> out dandruff!

Lowlevelling seems the way to go indeed, if there's anything that can be
done. Just back up the drive with
dd if=/dev/hdX conv=noerror bs=4096 | gzip > /some/where/bak.gz
lowlevel format it, and dump the whole image back. I guess that's the
best cance you have to save as much as possible, from what you said it
should be pretty much verything, mabe except for the MBR and some
Windoze stuff.

regards
	Matthias

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[gentoo-user] Re: low-level formatting a harddrive

[Francesco Talamona]

On Tuesday 18 October 2005 17:42, maxim wexler wrote:
[...]
>Is there a
> way to do a low-level format of part of a drive while
> leaving the rest intact?

It is a contradiction in terms, partitioning is not low-level.

Use partimage to save the partition to preserve and check/format the 
disk with provided utility.

Ciao
	Francesco
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